Susanna Huhtanen adventuring in software

Archive for February, 2012

My transition from a GNOME user to a developer has been in progress for two months now. I’m enjoying the challenges, but one constant annoyance has been bothering me along my journey:

The transition from user to developer seems to assume that in between I have had time to hack Linux for 10 years.

Well, I had a total of 0 days for that. I have grown up with the pleasure of not needing to know all the mysterious commands in terminal to get my Ubuntu running. Yes, I have memorized a couple of handy ones (killall -9 the programs!) but as a whole I’m a GUI-girl. I love to make small apps for myself to use, I like coding, but still without the OPW I would have given up already. For me the stumbling block is that the leap from user to developer is huge!

The thing that prompted this post was the setup for JHBuild. I felt uncertain and there were many things I wouldn’t have dared to do without the help of a friend. My dream would be to able to concentrate to the main thing itself with necessary information available without the presumption of being a hardcore Linux hacker.

There is need for both kinds of documentation: for those who are familiar with every nook and cranny of GNOME and Linux, and for those who have just had the great idea that they could have something to give to this community. I’m working towards my dream of having the latter, and I hope my documentation efforts will make this path easier for the enthusiastic hackers that come after me!